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Thursday, March 24, 2011

The core topic is "DDWFTTW", which stands for "Directly DownWind, Faster Than The Wind" and refers to a vehicle or vessel powered only by the wind. Until recently, it had always been thought to be impossible to build a wind-powered vehicle that could go faster than the wind while going directly down wind. That's because once the platform reaches the same speed as the wind, it seems like there would not be any wind forces acting on it, so how could it go faster if it's powered only by the wind?

Someone figured out how to do it and proposed his concept on the Internet.

And he was promptly ridiculed and called an idiot by almost everyone including physics professors.

He built a small prototype that proved the concept.

And he was promptly ridiculed and called a fraud and an idiot by almost everyone including physics professors.

He and a very small group of supporters managed to raise $15,000 to build a full size version that could carry a person. They demonstrated it to the Land Sailing Association where it clearly went directly down wind much faster than the wind.

Finally, most people believed him!

What's interesting to me is that the approach is very, very clever, but it's not really that complex, yet a lot of people just refuse to believe it, even after it's been clearly demonstrated.